Daily Poverty‐Related Stress and Coping: Associations with Child Learned Helplessness

• Author: Mallory L. Garnett,Mariam D. Seyler,Andrea M. Knorr,Jean‐Philippe Laurenceau,Eleanor D. Brown
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12217
• Published date: 01 October 2016
• Date: 01 October 2016

E D. B, M D. S, A M. K,  M L. G

West Chester University

J-P L University of Delaware

Daily Poverty-Related Stress and Coping:

Associations with Child Learned Helplessness

This study examined daily poverty-related

stress and parents’ efforts to help children cope

with stress in relation to learned helplessness

for young children attending a Head Start

preschool. A total of 750 telephone interviews

were conducted with 75 parents concerning

their daily stressors and strategies they used

to help children cope. A behavioral protocol

measured child learned helplessness. Multilevel

modeling showed a positive within-persons rela-

tionship between daily stress and coping, and a

positive between-persons relationship between

daily stress and child learned helplessness.

Implications include understanding the daily

processes through which the poverty ecology

transmits risk for negative child developmental

outcomes and through which parentsmight offer

protection. Specically, the results suggest that

daily poverty-related stressors may undermine

young children’s developing sense of control

and suggest the importance of further research

on how parent coping might promote positive

outcomes.

The ecology of poverty poses notable risks

to children’s healthy development (Duncan

Psychology Department, West Chester University, Room

30, Peoples Building, West Chester, PA 19383 (ebrown@

wcupa.edu).

Key Words: Coping, daily process, ecological systems, help-

lessness, poverty, stress.

& Brooks-Gunn, 1997, 2000; Evans, 2004;

McLoyd, 1990, 1998). The risk factors include

low income and correlated stressors that under-

mine children’s opportunities to experience

predictable person–environment interactions

(Evans, Gonnella, Marcynyszyn, Gentile, &

Salpekar, 2005). Poverty-related instability

and chaos predict child learned helplessness,

dened as lack of persistence in the face of

challenge following exposure to unpredictable

or uncontrollable outcomes (Evans, 2003),

and such helplessness predicts academic and

social-emotional problems (Fincham, Hokoda,

& Sanders, 1989; Hong, Chiu, Dweck, Lin,

& Wan, 1999; Nolen-Hoeksema, Girgus, &

Seligman, 1992). Yet diversity characterizes

families’ experiences of poverty-related stress,

and how parents cope may shape how children

relate to environmental challenges. Framed

by Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 2005) ecological

systems theory, the present study uses a daily

process approach to examine poverty-related

stress and parents’ efforts to help children cope

with stress in relation to learned helplessness

for children attending a Head Start preschool.

Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 2005) ecological

systems theory proposes that understanding

human development requires consideration of

context, process, person, and time. In the present

study, we focus on the context of poverty and

how stressors shaped by the macrosystem or

broader society impinge on the child’s microsys-

tem or immediate environment. Poverty-related

stressors can disrupt proximal processes, or

Family Relations 65 (October 2016): 591–602 591

DOI:10.1111/fare.12217